Made For Relationships

For intimate union between two people, for love of and for families and friends, we are meant to communicate, listen, think, create, and work alongside one another. As partners in life, love, and business, we are able to demonstrate our God-given abilities to create beauty, work for peace, protect, nurture, endure suffering and build lasting bonds. On our own, we often think of how we can use others and things for our own benefit; when we are in relationship, in community we’re more apt to think of how we can work for a common good.

In Genesis 1, God says that it is not good for man to be alone. He parades each animal before Adam seeking a mate for him unable to find one he puts Adam to sleep and extracts a bone from Adam making Eve with that bone. In the process showing, man needs to be in intimate union with another. Man on his own is not as good as he/she is when in relationship with another.

Later in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus will say when two or more are gathered together in my name I am there too. This, I believe means when we put Jesus at the center of our relationships He blesses it. In this blessing, our relationships are strengthened and they bring glory to God and goodness to us.

Psalm 139 eloquently says that God knows our deep most intimate thoughts, knitted us in our mother’s womb and knows what we desire and what is good for us. It ends with these lines: Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. This Psalm informs us that God created us knows our hearts and a proper response to God is turning to God in both our good and bad times. Life with God is one of praise and worship, of thanksgiving and repentance. Our purpose is found in knowing who we are and what God is, and living from these basic truths. We are to find our deepest life in relationship and community with God and our fellow humans.

Life alone is meaningless.

Life together is a miracle.

In Ephesians 5:21-6:9, Paul instructs us how we are to live with each other. He gives instructions to wives, husbands, children, parents, workers, and bosses. As my pastor has pointed out, we shouldn’t use this section of the bible or any other and point at someone and say do this, see this is what the bible says. Do what the bible tells us to do and not worry too much about what it tells others to do. We should live the bibles teachings and leave the rest to others and God. We have control over how we live and should do what the bible says and let the rest go. Pointing fingers will not help, besides when you point a finger at someone you have two pointing back at you. Live your faith and not anyone else’s.

The thing I appreciate the most about these bible verses is that I am meant to be in relationship with others that God says it is not good to be alone. My desire to be in a deep, intimate, and loving relationship with another, my hope of finding my soul mate is a God-given desire. Thus, it is a desire that God will fulfill; in time, I will meet my Eve, my Juliet. I will find the relationship I desire when the time is right, when I am able to sustain the blessing. It takes a moment to fall in love and the eternity to live that love. I also see that a proper response to all of life is reverence. Reverence for life must be displayed in all things, even and maybe most especially in the smallest things. How we treat others does matter. It says something about how we want life to be, how we see life, and how we want to remembered.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky speaks about when he wrote, “Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand of it. Love every leaf, every ray of God’s light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. Once you perceive it, you will begin to comprehend it better every day. And you will come at last to love the whole world with an all-embracing love.”

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3 Comments

jesusmyeverything

February 1, 2012 – 4:00 am

I like what you’ve written here. So true. Life is meant to be shared, and yet so many of us journey alone. I believe we heal and find fulfillment in relationship but we also get damaged and hurt in relationship. After being hurt deeply, we find it hard to be in relationship and so we are stuck in the alone category. May the Lord heal His people so that we can truly love one another in all spheres of life.